


Every Chambered Cell

by st_aurafina



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Gen, The Provisional Republic of Two Systems, Worldbuilding, architecture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 04:09:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17015451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina
Summary: Breq and Seivarden are asked to meet with Fleet Captain Uemi's daughter regarding a personal matter.





	Every Chambered Cell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).



> Thank you to my beta. 
> 
> Title from "The Chambered Nautilus" by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The message came for Breq directly, though it was not an official communiqué. Tisarwat had been sitting watch on _Mercy of Kalr_ , still nominally in charge while the Fleet Captain and her two senior lieutenants were on the station. 

Tisarwat sent a message to Seivarden about it immediately. "It's come through the Hrad system relays, but not a military server," she said. 

Seivarden could almost feel the curiosity seeping through the implants that _Mercy of Kalr_ used to connect her with Tisarwat. "It's addressed to the Fleet Captain, so have Ship forward it on to her," she said, her voice short. Gossip was an unappealing trait in a lieutenant. 

"But it's a personal letter!" Tisarwat said, agonised. "What if it's upsetting? The Fleet Captain is so busy at the moment and the last thing she needs while we're setting up the new republic is personal news that's going to make her… you know." 

"Make her what?" Seivarden said, drawn into the intrigue despite herself. Other peoples' perspectives on Breq were fascinating to Seivarden, who had only lately learned to start looking outside herself for insight. Ekalu's reverence for the Fleet Captain, for one. The odd, businesslike relationship Uran had with her, for another, as the young Citizen played the part of a small, sombre ambassador between Breq and the Undergarden residents. 

Tisarwat made a noise of exasperation, a rapid snort of air through her nostrils. "That thing where she gets all emotional and withdrawn and takes forever to process what someone has told her. Just when we need her focused." 

Seivarden almost let out a laugh because Tisarwat was right, and this was exactly what Breq did. Still, it was inappropriate for Tisarwat to point it out like just like that. For all she was shaping up to be an extremely competent officer, Tisarwat still needed the occasional rap over the knuckles. "Clever doesn't mean wise," Seivarden's aunt had liked to say of her students, as if they were children, for all she was the preceptor of a prestigious flight academy. To her aunt's credit, this certainly applied to Tisarwat. 

"I think we can all trust the Fleet Captain to restrain herself," Seivarden said, instead. "Unless you'd like to apply for the position of personal secretary, so you can open her mail for her?" 

Tisarwat didn't reply. Perhaps her silence was abashed, or perhaps it was lofty. Either way, she had forwarded the message to Breq as ordered, because Breq's head tilted with the characteristic posture of someone receiving a message directly. 

Breq and Seivarden were aboard _Gem of Sphene_ , inspecting the repairs to its engines that allowed the ship to gate again. The first test flight had gone very well. Her crew, made mostly of Ychana dock workers flanked by _Sphene's_ many and varied ancilliaries, hung all about the engine housing, watching monitors keenly as _Sphene_ ran the engines through yet another cycle. Queter, who had had some terrifying ideas about how to get efficiency up to a workable level, could only be seen by the bright yellow headscarf she wore over her growing hair. She was so deep inside the engine casing that Seivarden worried she might never come out, but the perpetual frown she had worn was fading day by day. 

Breq read her message and immediately stopped humming. Almost as one, every person on the deck turned to look at her in alarm. 

"Something on your mind, Cousin?" A _Sphene_ ancillary stooped to talk to Breq, a burly person with a heavy, clawed prosthesis where her left arm should be, the kind of person a younger Seivarden would have expected to speak with a barely comprehensible labourer's accent, but had instead a very dainty, proper manner.

Breq blinked the message away and shook her head. "I'm sorry to worry you, Cousin," she said. "It was a personal communication, and quite unexpected." 

The ancillary gave a serene nod, quite unsuitable for someone carrying _Sphene's_ acid consciousness, and patted her on the shoulder with the tip of one claw. "Well, then. Please share with the room when you feel ready." 

Breq caught Seivarden's eye, and together the two of them left Engineering for somewhere more private to discuss the message. 

 

Seivarden knew _Sphene_ 's Notai architecture well enough, in the way that any child of Vendaai would have learned from being taken on field trips to museums and floating ruins. There was an inner logic to Notai designs if you were familiar, the way the chambers nestled in between one another like the pages of two open books. Seivarden had never been fond of it, not even as a child. It meant that the connections between rooms and corridors were always slightly offset, angled upwards or downwards depending on where you were relative to the central spine. She turned to make certain that Breq had managed the sloping surface all right on her sometimes-awkward leg prosthesis, then tripped as her own toe caught on the edge lining a doorway into a cabin. She clutched the doorframe and swore. 

"Aatr's tits! I'm glad _Sphene_ is up and running, but if I trip over one more uneven floor, I'm going to find an industrial grader and level every deck," she said. Meanwhile, Breq had navigated the surface easily, despite the prosthesis on her growing leg. It was a little galling.

Seivarden threw herself into a chair, slouching deliberately. At least _Sphene_ had comfortable seating, all wide benches and firm cushions. There was none of that reproduction rubbish they'd carried off _Mercy of Kalr_ , with scrolls and flourishes exactly where you wanted to plant your backside. Breq might tell her that she makes too many superficial judgements based on appearance, and honestly, she was right, but Seivarden had known from the first that Captain Vel's taste was worse than questionable. 

" _Sphene_ won't thank you for saying things like that," said Breq. "It's a little touchy right now, with us crawling all over it and changing things.

"It can hear every word we say in here," said Seivarden. "It can complain if it wants." 

Breq didn't say anything, but leaned over and opened the cabin door to admit the one-armed ancillary who carried a tea tray with flask and bowls and a box of jellied tamarind slices. 

"Thank you, Cousin," she said, as it carefully placed the tray on a low, white table. As it left, the ancillary gave Seivarden an evil stare. Still lounging in her seat, Seivarden made a face at its retreating back. She supposed she wasn't going to be this ship's favourite either. Ah well. 

"I've had a message from Fleet Captain Uemi's daughter," Breq said, and poured the tea. "She wants to meet with us, for a private discussion. There's a long explanation of the need to establish an entry point into the Republic of Two Systems, but I'm certain that's a façade." 

Seivarden picked at a jellied fruit slice. "A façade for what, exactly?" She kept her voice carefully non-committal. She'd delivered messages to Uemi on Breq's behalf, and she knew there was serious tension between the two Fleet Captains, tension that Breq had chosen not to explain. "I know that Uemi is a strong supporter of Omaugh Anaander. I doubt she's planning to establish trade routes, so I would assume this is, what? Intelligence gathering? An assassination attempt?"

"Possibly." Breq took a sip of tea then sat very still, that particular ancillary stillness that meant she was running scenarios and had lost track of the conversation already. Seivarden drew up her legs on the comfortable bench and cradled her tea, thinking too. 

Breq's messages to Fleet Captain Uemi had been peculiar, above and beyond her obvious anger at her as Anaander Mianaai's proxy. Breq was usually too calculating to simply hurl insults for the sake of some personal satisfaction. 

"Who are you protecting?" Seivarden asked into the silence. This was the best way to gently startle Breq into revealing information: startling questions that came seemingly apropos of nothing. 

Breq eyed her over the rim of her tea bowl. "What do you mean?" she said, immediately suspicious.

Well, maybe it was working less well lately. "Whatever it is about Fleet Captain Uemi, she makes you do that thing. You know, where you don't tell anyone anything, because we're all safer that way. In your opinion." 

"A thing?" said Breq. "You're talking about personality quirks. I don't have quirks." Her face was tranquil, which in this context meant Seivarden had hit a mark. 

Seivarden laughed. "Oh, Fleet Captain, you will never guess how much your crew navigate via those non-existent quirks." Then she stopped teasing. She sipped her tea and ate a slice of fruit, thinking of how to phrase this. "There comes a point, though, where protectiveness becomes a danger," she said. "This might be an opportune time to tell me – or someone – what is going on with Uemi. If there are undercurrents at play here that will have relevance for your safety, Breq, you need to tell me about them."

Breq watched her, unblinking, and Seivarden looked away. She'd unsettled Breq with these questions. She felt the unwanted intrusion of fear in her gut – fear that she'd misjudged the situation, or the tenor of the conversation they were having. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she told herself. Thinking yourself so clever. Teasing Breq! You have no right to intimacy here, you have not earned it. 

Then Breq said, slowly and thoughtfully as if measuring the value of each word, "Treat Fleet Captain Uemi as if her actions were those of the Lord of Radch herself. And extend that caution to anyone in her family, also." 

It was both an order and a dismissal, and it dispelled the casual mood of this meeting. Seivarden stood and brushed crystallised sugar from her gloved fingertips. "Yes, Fleet Captain," she said, then bowed and left. 

 

Not having any active assignment, she took herself back to Engineering. As she walked, she sent an update to Ekalu, who was acting as _Mercy of Kalr's_ representative on Athoek Station. 

"You'll be going to meet the daughter, then?" Ekalu said. She was stuck in an endless meeting about ridiculous things like docking priorities and shipping contracts, all of which she could navigate competently and still maintain a silent conversation with Seivarden. 

"I think Fleet Captain will want to do that, yes." Seivarden walked up a gently sloping corridor as she spoke. The lighting came through translucent wall panels, washing soft and faintly pink on the gleaming white surfaces. It was hard to believe _Sphene_ was three thousand years old, until one remembered it had undergone very little foot traffic for two of those millennia. 

She had a sense of Ekalu shifting unhappily in her chair at the table in the meeting room on Athoek Station. "What is it?" she said. 

" _Sword of Gurat_ is talking about leaving again," Ekalu said. "Its repairs are complete, and there's no reason for it to stay in a Republic that it did not wish to join in the first place. If you take _Mercy of Kalr_ to the outer stations, we'll be a little undefended." 

Seivarden stopped and looked behind her. Had she missed a turn? These damn corridors, segueing effortlessly into each other. "It's bluffing," she said. "It can't go anywhere near either instance of Mianaai with partially disarmed accesses. The first thing that will happen is its AI core will be replaced with one completely under the Lord's control. It knows that." She doubled back, found the opening she'd missed and took it, walking slowly downhill now. "Still, I suppose _Sphene_ is just sitting here accruing docking fees it can't pay. Maybe we can take it."

She jumped when the tattooed, one-armed ancillary met her a dozen paces down the corridor. "Where were you headed, Lieutenant? Maybe I can help you find your way." 

"Engineering, and thank you, no. I'm not lost." Seivarden said. 

The ancillary leaned a shoulder against the wall of the corridor and it slid aside, revealing yet another corridor curving upward at a gentle incline. "This might be a little quicker, then," it said. 

Seivarden scowled but walked through the door, picking her feet up over the threshold. She didn't say anything about unnecessarily circuitous architecture, though she very much wanted to. The ancillary walked beside her in silence, presumably to stop her from wandering helplessly through the ship until starvation took her. 

"What was this body before you took it over, anyway?" she said as she walked. It was a rude question, she supposed, though there was no particular etiquette regarding this topic of conversation. Not yet, anyway, though she'd never have asked it of Breq. _Sphene_ , on the other hand, had never shown any qualms about speaking its mind. 

"Cannibal," it said. 

Seivarden was glad of years of training that stopped her reacting with instant revulsion. "Oh," she said. There didn't seem to be anything else to say. 

"She ate seventeen full grown merchant traders," _Sphene_ went on placidly. "They were very large, and as you can see, contributed to a very strong body in a time when food was not exactly plentiful. She was inevitably caught and tried and so I was able to gain access to her." 

"How are the engines going?" Seivarden said, a desperate attempt to change the subject. She knew well enough that _Sphene_ liked to shock, but there was a limit to what one could gloss over in a conversation. "You're going to have to test them eventually," she said, thinking of her conversation with Ekalu. 

"Oh yes," said _Sphene_ , eagerly. "Would you like to come along? If something goes wrong with the gate, we could spend entire lifetimes stuck in the middle of nowhere." The ancillary's smile was wide, and Seivarden could see its teeth had, at some stage, been sharpened with a file. 

They emerged into the engineering chamber, and Seivarden immediately felt a little better. She turned to the ancillary and gave a small bow. "Let me discuss it with the Fleet Captain." 

 

The plan was this: they'd travel to the edge of the system, giving _Sphene_ the chance to run in its updated engines. Seivarden and Breq would meet with Uemi's daughter there at one of the outer stations, and _Sphene_ would travel a little further out to begin preliminary testing of the gating mechanism.

Breq had negotiated the details, arguing minutiae with Seivarden and her other lieutenants. Tisarwat had been desperate to come with them but Breq had steadfastly refused. 

"But Fleet Captain!" Tisarwat had said over the link. "You know I can be helpful. You know why I can be helpful, in this situation specifically!" 

"That's enough, Lieutenant!" Breq had snapped into mid-air over the table in _Sphene_ 's mess hall. Her tone was brusque even for Breq. "I need you to remain on guard here, to keep Athoek Station safe." 

This piece of abject flattery couched in an order worked yet again for Tisarwat, though Seivarden thought the time was near when the junior lieutenant would stop allowing herself to fall for that. And honestly, what with the secrets and the undercurrents and Tisarwat's great mysterious whatever it was, Seivarden would have been happy to stay behind, but Breq would hear nothing of it. 

"No. Uemi's daughter will certainly know your history and my connection to it," Breq said to Seivarden, her eyes still off in the middle distance where she was certainly carrying on several conversations at once. "Your presence will unsettle her, and I'll take any opportunity to do that. _Sphene_ we'll take as an unknown entity, and you we'll take as a dazzling celebrity. Hopefully between the two of you, I'll be able to find out what she's really doing here." 

Seivarden opened her mouth to ask how she could provide an adequate distraction when she didn't know what was going on. Then she recognised the bunching tightness between her shoulder blades as an urge to cross her arms, just before Breq received data from Ship telling her all about it. A moment later, Breq had Ship's message, and narrowed her eyes at Seivarden. 

Seivarden pushed herself away from the table and stood. "Well, I'll go and pack, then. Maybe I can find something fancy to wear to dinner with the Fleet Captain's daughter." 

Before Breq could reply, or even officially excuse her from the meeting, she left, walking towards _Sphene_ 's docking port to re-enter Athoek Station. 

 

Seivarden found herself an empty cabin for the night, since they'd be travelling a few days to the outer system. It was small and rounded with an angled ceiling, and invisible storage tucked into every surface. She hung her dress uniform in a slim closet, slung her bag into a large drawer and sat on the bed. 

The sloping ceiling was barely a hand's breadth higher than her head over the low bed, and she sighed. Notai soldiers three thousand years ago must have been quite a bit shorter than she was. She'd almost certainly forget and crack her skull open on it tomorrow morning. 

The door slid open quietly and Breq appeared in the doorway with her bag. 

Seivarden started and looked at her. They had not spoken much over the afternoon apart from necessities pertinent to the mission. If this had been _Mercy of Kalr_ , where she and Breq shared quarters by some unwritten arrangement, Seivarden wouldn't have questioned whether she and Breq would sleep together. They often did after arguments, and in fact, Amaat One had unofficially been using Seivarden's quarters pending her own field promotion. Here on _Sphene_ , though, the arrangements were less clear. 

Breq carried her own bag to the centre of the room, then sat carefully beside Seivarden on the bed, not looking at her. 

"It's not just my secret to keep," she said simply. "If it were, then perhaps…" she stopped speaking for a moment, then seemed to make a decision. "Perhaps I'd tell you." 

It was very Breq, and that was somehow reassuring. She would never tell Seivarden a convenient lie to spare her feelings. She didn't completely trust Seivarden on certain aspects, and why would she? It was nothing to be ashamed of, Seivarden told herself, quelling the faint wave of nausea that surged whenever she thought of those times. 

"As long as you tell me when I need to know," Seivarden said, and stood, carefully dodging the low ceiling. "Now, you don't have Kalr Five hovering, so shall I stand in?" She held out a hand for Breq's jacket, and Breq shrugged out of it with a smile. 

Sleep came surprisingly easily, considering the emotional ups and downs of the day. Seivarden woke with Breq pressed against her shoulder in the comfortable bed and for a moment was inexplicably reminded of the temple in her home. Her original home in Inais Province, with the garden of sculptures dedicated to Varden. 

She idly wondered if Breq would have liked it, and in her half-sleep, imagined showing it to her: the sculpture garden with all the sleeping figures; the high-ceilinged chapels that supposedly had spectacular acoustics (Seivarden had never noticed, and wasn't a good enough singer to be invested in finding out more); and that one oddly-shaped room that had been designed around a mathematical sequence by one of Seivarden's mad ancestors. Seivarden had been told by other children that this particular room was haunted. She'd been convinced of it, too, when she took up a dare to visit it at night. The dare required one to creep into the room, walk all the way to the central plinth and touch it. It had been cold and dark, filled with whispers, and her footsteps had bounced back to her from high-up places as if someone followed her path along the roof. Seivarden had completed the dare – at that age she would rather have died of fright than of the shame of cowardice – but like all of her relatives, had avoided that particular room for the rest of her time at home. She knew better now, of course: while she wasn't an expert on the physics of soundwaves, she knew that what she had thought were ghosts were just echoes of her own movements. 

Still, she wondered what Breq would have made of the place, and drifted off to sleep again, to a dream where Breq stood at her side in that odd room and told her the exact measurements of all the walls, pointing out the places where songs would bounce and mix then return sounding completely different. 

"The strength is in the bending of it," Breq said, her voice multiplied into many voices, some deep and some resonant, some tuneful and some not. In the dream, Seivarden turned to look at her, surprised, and found that it was One Esk who stood there, all the long forgotten faces from her time on Justice of Toren.

 

When she woke, she immediately cracked her forehead on the low ceiling, hard enough to see bright stars in her vision. 

"Damn it!" she yelled, and clutched at her forehead. 

Breq came awake lightning fast beside her, assessed the situation and had the one-armed ancillary at the door with a corrective before the dazzling lights in Seivarden's head faded. Still, it made for a miserable start to the day, and if the bruising didn't settle before they arrived at Meanta Station, she'd make a sorry sight in front of Fleet Captain Uemi's daughter. 

Fortunately, in the following two days, _Sphene_ recruited her to help the human bridge crew find some way to operate as a team, and that was complex enough to keep her mind busy until they arrived at the station. 

"I'm not sure this is going to work," said the original ancillary from the Undergarden, sitting in the Captain's chair. Seivarden stood beside it, and watched the crew at work. 

Each human was shadowed by an ancillary, and the bridge was entirely too crowded for Seivarden's comfort. Queter was not here; she seemed to have developed an affinity with _Sphene_ 's engines, and spent all of her days buried to the gills in the machinery of the ship. 

"Not with this many people on the bridge," Seivarden said. "They've all got implants, for Amaat's sake. Let them do their jobs." She tapped a few ancillaries on the shoulder, and they turned to look at her, annoyed and quizzical. "These can all get out. You’ve been flying yourself for centuries, after all. If anything goes wrong, you can easily take over." 

"You sound like _Sword of Atagaris_ 's ghastly Amaat Lieutenant," said _Sphene_. "Oh, Ship will tell me if anything goes wrong." Its voice was bitter and, Seivarden thought, a little afraid. 

She started to speak, realised she was going to start with "You have to…" when it really wasn't her place to tell _Sphene_ how it should feel or behave. 

"It's not going to be the same," she said, instead. "I'm sorry for that loss, and I can't even imagine what it feels like to see humans on your decks again, after those people you knew so well." 

The ancillary watched her, its expression dubious and lip curled, ready to deliver some snide comment. 

"You're a beautiful ship," Seivarden said. "And _fast_! Look at you, eating the kilometres up like nothing else in this system. It would be a shame for you to hide away and mourn for another three thousand years. As reasonable as it would be for you to do that, after the way you've been treated." 

"Lieutenant Seivarden!" the ancillary said. "If I'd know you had as sweet a mouth as this, I'd have listened to you earlier." It sighed and cupped a chin with one hand. Seivarden wondered if she was seeing some artefact of captains past, here. Something Captain Minask had habitually done, perhaps, and _Sphene_ had absorbed into its own body language. 

"Ah, well," _Sphene_ said, eventually, and switched to Notai. " _Let's not cut down the tree to catch the bird_ , as they used to say." 

Seivarden spent a few moments translating that, then parsing more than the literal meaning of the words. "No," she said, not entirely sure she understood. "I suppose not." 

When she got back to her cabin that night, she found Breq and the one-armed ancillary shouting at each other, inches apart, both with fists clenched and shoulders high. A thick blanket hung above the bed, partially fixed in place with ugly but serviceable yellow tape. 

"Hundreds of people have slept there perfectly safely without braining themselves in the morning! Don't blame me if she doesn't have the ability to look before she sits up!" The one-armed ancillary's sweet, dainty voice had taken on a whole new tone, and its muscled arm tensed and flexed with anger, setting the tattoos dancing. The servos in the prosthetic arm hummed, high and tense.

Breq had a way of arguing that made one feel small and illogical and she used it now. "That doesn't make it a sensible design. We're not going to make any sort of impression if we show up and Seivarden has a corrective plastered to her face!" 

"Wrap the blanket around her head for all I care!! Don't make modifications to me without asking! And did you ask the Lieutenant if she minds being the party favour at this meeting, anyway? She has more skills than just being famous and dissolute, after all!" 

Seivarden didn't want any part of this argument. She tore the blanket down, wrapped it around her shoulders and lay down on the floor. "Try not to throw the first punch, Breq," she said. "Good night." 

 

Meanta Station was both small and large at the same time: a small population, barely one tenth of that on the main station, though the main station would have fit easily inside this one. While it had standard environmental and safety systems, it needed no AI to run operations, since most of the station was empty space. It was hung with huge storage bays, where cargo ships would dock and unload, before the resources were distributed through Athoek system, to the planet and to other stations. 

Citizen Ludari was not military, according to Breq's research, though her connection to the military via her mother was obviously strong enough that she'd been given a Mercy from the Omaugh fleet to courier her here. 

"Not a Sword, though," _Sphene_ said with obvious relish. "Maybe Ludari's not the favourite daughter." It was still the original ancillary speaking, and she sat in the Captain's chair as they manoeuvred into the assigned docking bay. 

Seivarden gave the Mercy a quick glance, then looked over the new officers at their terminals. A three-day flight had knocked them into adequate shape, though they answered back more readily than Seivarden liked. Still, _Sphene_ took to that well, snapping out sarcastic returns and acid comments as fast as they came. It was a different style of captaining – and how odd that was, to finally see a ship captain itself – but perhaps it was what _Sphene_ needed now. 

_Mercy of Ninmah_ , enormous engines and all, was still dwarfed by the spindles of Meanta Station. It showed some black streaks along one flank, signs perhaps of battle scarring, but otherwise seemed functional. When Seivarden went to change into her dress uniform – Breq had worn hers since she woke this morning, certain that she wouldn't stumble or spill breakfast on herself – she saw Queter at one of the curved display windows on _Sphene_ 's port side. 

"Hell of an engine to hull ratio," Queter said, at Seivarden's approach. "Reckon she'll get some speed up." 

Seivarden paused a moment beside her. "Never underestimate a Mercy," she said. "It'll climb right up behind you and sting you on the arse before you know it's there." She'd been so scathing of that Mercy she'd been rescued by, she remembered suddenly, and her cheeks burned. That was before, she told herself. She had been raw and terrified and she was not that person anymore. 

Ludari was slim and narrow hipped, with a closely cropped beard and quick dark eyes. She met them at the docking bay with a polite bow. 

"Thank you for coming, Fleet Captain," she said. Her voice was even and her eyes twinkled, creased at the corners with warmth. Her coat was immaculate and ivory, the full-length style that had been popular at Omaugh Palace, and the string of beads across the lapels was of small green stones. "I am grateful for the chance to talk to you." 

She had organised a meeting room, clean but worn, in the station's administration offices. 

"The primary thing I wish to discuss is the founding of an embassy of sorts, where ships may dock without running the risk of being…" 

"Freed?" offered Breq, generously. "Emancipated? Is that why _Mercy of Ninmah_ is all the way across the station? To keep it safe from us?" 

Ludari smiled, a tired smile but one that creased the corners of her eyes. "Indeed. You'll understand I'll have a little trouble getting home if you choose to repatriate one of my mother's ships." 

"If it chooses to repatriate itself," Breq amended. 

This went on for a long time, long enough that Seivarden's attention wandered. Ludari was nervous, she thought, especially the longer the meeting ran on, though she managed the diplomatic aspects skilfully. Still, there was a waxy pallor to her skin after a few hours, and she kept her gloved hands folded neatly on her lap. That was a tactic Seivarden knew well enough; it was an easy way to hide trembling. Ludari had been propping herself up chemically and it was beginning to wear off. 

Seivarden slipped a hand under the table and gestured a message towards Breq. "She's going to call a break soon," she said. "She needs a hit of whatever's holding her steady." 

Breq responded to this statement by driving negotiation a little harder, pushing for more and more rights: to interview and inspect any Radch ships that docked here, a right of veto on those ship's return to Radch space. Ludari was visibly unwell by the time Breq leaned over the table and said, voice venomously low, "Do you know what your mother is?" 

"Yes," whispered Ludari, miserable. "Can you help her?" There was pathetic desperation in her voice, and one glance at Breq's face told Seivarden that there was no respite to be found there. She almost felt sorry for Ludari; it was painful to have hope lanced by Fleet Captain Breq. 

At least Breq didn't toy with her prey. "No," she said, curt and merciless. "You will not recover your mother from this. I would advise making arrangements to protect the rest of your family as best you can."

Ludari wilted and Breq sat back in her seat, apparently satisfied. "Let's call a break," she said, calmly, and reached for her glass of water. 

"I assume you're not going to tell me what that was about?" Seivarden said, once Ludari had left the room with her shoulders hunched. 

Breq stared at the empty doorway. "I can't," she said. "But this won't be her only sortie. Her mother will want to do as much damage as she can before we throw her daughter out of the Republic." She turned to Seivarden and for a moment, Seivarden couldn't breathe for the coldness there. "Go and find out what she was sent to sabotage," she said, and turned away. 

There was a waiting area outside the meeting room. The offices were at the top of the spindle, and the waiting area formed a ring around the central spoke, with wide viewing windows looking down on the docked ships. Seivarden found Ludari gazing down on _Sphene_. 

"It's beautiful," Ludari said. Her hands were steady now, and while her forehead was beaded with sweat still, the confidence and warmth was back. 

Seivarden looked down at _Sphene_ 's gracious curves, deliberately shell-like. "Yes, it is." 

"You know she brought you here to fuck me. Captain Seivarden, fallen hero of Garsedd." Ludari turned to look at Seivarden and on the air that moved with her, Seivarden caught the scent of it. Sweet and acrid like overripe citrus, it brought with it a string of memories: a winter citron that had rolled under her childhood bed, that first stolen sip of wine, and the eerie but beautiful scent when she had cracked the first vial in her hand. 

"You're on kef," Seivarden said, and took a few steps back. 

Ludari laughed, and Seivarden realised that she was only a little under the influence, just enough to take the edge off her anxiety. It meant – Seivarden knew this well enough by now – that she was still in the early stages of addiction, when kef was the most wonderful thing imaginable. Seivarden's breath caught in her chest with every inhalation, and she felt the spin of the station, the artificial gravity amplifying the nausea from the kef shunt Medic had installed. 

"Don't worry," Ludari said. "Mother made sure I brought enough for you." She reached into the pocket of her ivory damask coat for something made of glass, something that clinked between her fingers. "Here. There's more waiting on _Mercy of Ninmah_. As much as you like." 

Seivarden was fairly sure she was going to faint, or perhaps vomit on Ludari. She crossed her arms over her chest, holding herself still. "I think you'll find," she said with icy coolness she absolutely did not feel, "That your mother sent you to fuck me. Tell her thank you, and no." 

Then she turned and fled. By the time she reached the elevator she was running. 

 

Breq caught up with her in the docking bay, by which time Seivarden was on the point of hysteria. She pushed Breq hard in the middle of her chest with the flats of her palms, shoving her backwards in an ungainly stagger as her prosthesis struggled to adjust. 

The crew, sitting all around _Sphene_ 's open gangway, swiftly vanished wordlessly inside the ship, all suddenly focused on tasks that needed completing right now. 

"Did you know?" Seivarden shouted at Breq. "Did you know she'd bring kef? Is that why it was me and not Tisarwat? Because I'm vulnerable?" 

Breq took Seivarden's wrists in hers and held them tight, so that Seivarden couldn't hit her anymore. "I knew she would be a weapon, and she would be aimed at the person beside me." 

Seivarden sagged, the nausea and the panic too much for her body to combat any further. She folded downwards and Breq went with her, till they were sitting cross-legged facing each other, joined at the place where Breq's fingers held tight round Seivarden's wrists. 

"I know well enough where my perceived vulnerabilities lie," Breq went on. "It's not myself, I'm not afraid of pain or death. It's the people I care for who are my weakness in their eyes." She sighed and stared over Seivarden's shoulder. "Well, that's what I thought. To be honest, I'm starting to think that you're the one with the greater self-awareness of her faults. I apparently have my weaknesses out on display as any person. You'll note that Uemi sent me someone damaged, someone whom I might conceivably have taken in." There was a wistfulness in Breq's expression, an easing of the tension that normally kept her emotions in check. 

"You brought me here because I'm a vulnerability? You made a target of me." Seivarden choked on those words, shame and terror roiling inside her. She wanted to swipe at her face, but Breq held her arms still and she could not quite force herself to escape those two points of contact. 

Breq took some long breaths, holding them for a few seconds between inhalation and exhalation. Seivarden scowled at the obvious technique, even as her own body obediently mirrored the action. 

"You are a vulnerability. Who isn't, who is cared for and loved by another?" Breq said. "It doesn't make you weak. Far from it. Quite frankly, if I know I'm going into a battle, I know who I want by my side." 

She took another breath, waited for Seivarden to follow suit. "I'm sorry that I didn't predict the nature of the bullet aimed at you," she said. "I wouldn't have exposed you to that if I'd known. But for reasons I can't tell you, it would have been too dangerous for Tisarwat, and Ekalu I don't know so well as you. Not enough to put my back to in a firefight, not yet. Not when I don't know the weapon or the game." 

Seivarden's breathing had settled now, and she began to be aware of her surroundings. "So what happens now?" she said, because Breq's words were going to take a long, long time to understand. 

"Oh, a lot of things," said Breq, and let go of Seivarden's wrists so she could stand up. She brushed herself down with her gloved hands while her prosthesis made a low whir. "Ludari will be arrested, for one thing. And she's given us a good reason to board _Mercy of Ninmah_ and have a little word with it." 

"Another ship for the Fleet Captain?" Seivarden said, standing herself. The dock workers were slowly returning to their leisurely positions around the gangway. 

"Maybe," said Breq. "I hope so." She looked at Seivarden. "Shall we go back aboard? Medic will be angry if I don't take care of you right now. I could make you some tea. Or perhaps we could go and find the gym?" 

Seivarden sighed at the thought of navigating those endless sloping tunnels, then she wiped her eyes and scrubbed at her nose with the back of her hand like a schoolchild with a cold. "Why don't you start by putting that blanket back above the bed, before Notai architecture ends my life?" she said, and took Breq's arm to help her over the gangway.


End file.
